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Originally posted by Dave Hurt
I know exactly what I'm talking about.
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Actually you don't...
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The new Intel and AMD processors are a hybrid of risc and cisc. They take a larger instruction set and break it down into smaller sets of instructions. Not as far as a risc chip, but they do. That's why pc processors have become so fast lately.
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Processors do not break down instructions. They fetch instructions from memory and operate on them. That's all they do. It's up to the compiler to break down code into instructions the processor understands. The speed limitation of the chip isn't directly related to its instruction set, it's more of a physical boundry. The problem with older CISC processors was that some of the operations took a long time & stalled the pipeline (clock ticks but no instructions get processed). It doesn't slow down the chip, it slows down the execution of the code. Processor designers have found ways around stalling that I'm not really familiar with.
If you want more info about processor design, go to U of IL and take ECE312
I know I posted on here a while back about processor speed, instruction set, etc, but I can't find it
